RESUMO
BACKGROUND: This study aimed to evaluate the Middle East (ME) countries' contribution to the Journal of Arthroplasty (JOA)'s publications in the past 20 years. METHODS: All articles published in JOA from 2000 to 2020 were evaluated for the contribution prevalence of ME countries' authors, which were divided into category I, if all the authors were affiliated to ME institutions, and category II, if at least one coauthor affiliated to ME institutions was listed in the articles with other international authors. RESULTS: A total of 7837 original articles were evaluated. Authors affiliated with ME institutions contributed to 144 (1.8%) articles (148 individual country contributions) from ten (62.5%) out of a total of 16 ME countries. Sixty-eight articles (47.2%) were classified as category I; cooperation between different ME institutes (The authors were from two different ME countries.) was reported in two (1.4%) articles. The top five contributing countries were Egypt, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, contributing 89.2% of the total articles published by ME institutions. Out of the 144 articles, 80 (55.6%) articles were published between 2016 and 2020, 37 (25.7%) articles between 2011 and 2015, and 29 (20.1%) articles between 2000 and 2010. There was a 15.7% mean annual growth in the percentage of ME articles. CONCLUSION: Although there was an increasing trend in the contributions of ME countries' authors to JOA publications over the past 20 years, the overall contribution is still low; moreover, the cooperation between ME institutions is minimal.